Between May 29 and July 1919, an expedition organized by Cambridge astronomer Arthur Eddington and the Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson photographed first an eclipse of the Sun (May 29) and then, a month later, the stars where the Sun had been during the eclipse. By comparing the two photographs, the deflection of light caused by the Sun’s gravity could be precisely measured. Einstein’ gravity theory predicted a deflection value of 1.75 arcseconds, and Newton’s gravity theory a value half that. The results were announced in November 1919 to a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society. Prof. Salim Mansur nicely described the expedition a few weeks ago on this site.

Einstein was confirmed! Newton was overthrown! And multiculturalism was born.

Let me recommend reading Prof. Salim Mansur’s Delectable Lie: a Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism, which gives the following very nice definition of “multiculturalism:” the idea “that all cultures are equal and deserving of equal treatment in a liberal democracy…” (p. 2).

So how did the eclipse observations birth multiculturalism? By overthrowing the Newtonian Empire.

For if the central theory of physics, Newtonian physics, could be proven false, there was no guarantee that Einstein would not himself be overthrown in the future. As Karl Popper put it in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery, “All universal theories, whatever their content, have zero probability” (p. 373).

So why bother to test any theory? They are all false. Western civilization was believed, before the eclipse expedition, to be superior because its knowledge was superior to those of other cultures, including earlier Western culture. But if all theories have zero probability of being true, then the theories underlying all cultures are equal because they all are equally false. Indeed, it follows that objective truth does not exist, because an objective truth would have probability one, not zero, of being true.

But what if the Newtonian Empire actually never fell? What if Einstein’s gravity theory -- which is in fact correct -- is not a successor of Newtonian theory, but instead a special case of Newtonian theory?

Then all cultures are not equal. Then Western scientific culture is superior to all the other human cultures. Then postmodernism is complete nonsense.

Einstein gravity theory is in fact a special case of Newtonian gravity theory!

To see this, it is first necessary to formulate the two gravity theories in the same mathematical language. This was accomplished in 1924 by the great French mathematician Elie Cartan, who showed that Newton gravity is time being curved, while Einstein gravity is time and space being curved. In Cartan language, the equations of the two theories are:

Newton Einstein

Rmn = 4pGSmn Rmn = 4pGSmn

If these equations look the same to you, it is because they are the same! In both cases, Rmn is the Ricci curvature tensor, G is Newton’s gravitational constant, and Smn is the density of matter tensor. The Greek subscripts can take on the values 1, 2, 3, or 4, the first three representing the three directions of space, and 4 representing time, which for both Newton and Einstein, is the fourth dimension.

But in the original Cartan formulation, the identity of the two equations is misleading. For Newton, who did not know space could be curved, there is no curvature in space, which means Rmn is zero when the Greek letters represent space, while for Einstein, space as well as time is curved. So for Einstein, Rmn is non-zero for all subscripts.

But there is no reason to restrict Newtonian gravity to non-curved space. Had he known of curved space, Newton himself would have added spatial curvature to his equations. I showed how to add spatial curvature to Cartan/Newton in a paper published in the leading British astronomy journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. When spatial curvature is added to Cartan/Newton, Rmn is then non-zero for all spatial subscripts.

With spatial curvature added, Newton gravity is now more general than Einstein gravity, because for Newton, the spatial curvature can be anything. Nothing in Newtonian theory restricts spatial curvature.

We can restrict spatial curvature only by taking into account Maxwell’s equations, which was considered part of Newtonian physics in the nineteenth century. One of Einstein’s greatest achievements was to show that Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, which requires that the speed of light be the same for all observers, thus requires that space and time be mixed together, which is to say, combined together to make space-time.

When this fact is incorporated into Newton’s equations in Cartan’s curvature language, it can be shown mathematically that not only is the spatial curvature now restricted, but the restriction necessarily turns Newton’s equations into Einstein’s equations! That is, Einstein gravity is restricted Newton gravity! I have shown in a paper published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that quantum mechanics is also restricted Newtonian mechanics.

The Newtonian Empire never fell! Newtonian physics, the center of modernity, holds!

The Australian philosopher David Stove, in his book Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult, showed that all post-modernism, in particular the entire work of the philosophers Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, is based on the belief that Newtonian physics was replaced in the twentieth century. If one reads carefully the founding texts of postmodernism in the humanities and the social sciences, one sees that these texts acknowledge that postmodernism is based on the perceived fall of Newton. Often they quote Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to this effect.

So all postmodernism is based on a mathematical error. There was no revolution in twentieth-century physics. As George Orwell pointed out in 1984, left-wing philosophy is ultimately based on a denial of mathematical truth, in particular denying that 2 + 2 = 4.

It is time universities, and intellectuals generally, accept that 2 + 2 = 4, reject multiculturalism, and return to modernity.

Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. He is the author of numerous technical papers, mainly in cosmology, quantum mechanics and general relativity. His non-technical books areThe Physics of Immortalityand The Physics of Christianity.

Between May 29 and July 1919, an expedition organized by Cambridge astronomer Arthur Eddington and the Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson photographed first an eclipse of the Sun (May 29) and then, a month later, the stars where the Sun had been during the eclipse. By comparing the two photographs, the deflection of light caused by the Sun’s gravity could be precisely measured. Einstein’ gravity theory predicted a deflection value of 1.75 arcseconds, and Newton’s gravity theory a value half that. The results were announced in November 1919 to a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society. Prof. Salim Mansur nicely described the expedition a few weeks ago on this site.

Einstein was confirmed! Newton was overthrown! And multiculturalism was born.

Let me recommend reading Prof. Salim Mansur’s Delectable Lie: a Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism, which gives the following very nice definition of “multiculturalism:” the idea “that all cultures are equal and deserving of equal treatment in a liberal democracy…” (p. 2).

So how did the eclipse observations birth multiculturalism? By overthrowing the Newtonian Empire.

For if the central theory of physics, Newtonian physics, could be proven false, there was no guarantee that Einstein would not himself be overthrown in the future. As Karl Popper put it in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery, “All universal theories, whatever their content, have zero probability” (p. 373).

So why bother to test any theory? They are all false. Western civilization was believed, before the eclipse expedition, to be superior because its knowledge was superior to those of other cultures, including earlier Western culture. But if all theories have zero probability of being true, then the theories underlying all cultures are equal because they all are equally false. Indeed, it follows that objective truth does not exist, because an objective truth would have probability one, not zero, of being true.

But what if the Newtonian Empire actually never fell? What if Einstein’s gravity theory -- which is in fact correct -- is not a successor of Newtonian theory, but instead a special case of Newtonian theory?

Then all cultures are not equal. Then Western scientific culture is superior to all the other human cultures. Then postmodernism is complete nonsense.

Einstein gravity theory is in fact a special case of Newtonian gravity theory!

To see this, it is first necessary to formulate the two gravity theories in the same mathematical language. This was accomplished in 1924 by the great French mathematician Elie Cartan, who showed that Newton gravity is time being curved, while Einstein gravity is time and space being curved. In Cartan language, the equations of the two theories are:

Newton Einstein

Rmn = 4pGSmn Rmn = 4pGSmn

If these equations look the same to you, it is because they are the same! In both cases, Rmn is the Ricci curvature tensor, G is Newton’s gravitational constant, and Smn is the density of matter tensor. The Greek subscripts can take on the values 1, 2, 3, or 4, the first three representing the three directions of space, and 4 representing time, which for both Newton and Einstein, is the fourth dimension.

But in the original Cartan formulation, the identity of the two equations is misleading. For Newton, who did not know space could be curved, there is no curvature in space, which means Rmn is zero when the Greek letters represent space, while for Einstein, space as well as time is curved. So for Einstein, Rmn is non-zero for all subscripts.

But there is no reason to restrict Newtonian gravity to non-curved space. Had he known of curved space, Newton himself would have added spatial curvature to his equations. I showed how to add spatial curvature to Cartan/Newton in a paper published in the leading British astronomy journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. When spatial curvature is added to Cartan/Newton, Rmn is then non-zero for all spatial subscripts.

With spatial curvature added, Newton gravity is now more general than Einstein gravity, because for Newton, the spatial curvature can be anything. Nothing in Newtonian theory restricts spatial curvature.

We can restrict spatial curvature only by taking into account Maxwell’s equations, which was considered part of Newtonian physics in the nineteenth century. One of Einstein’s greatest achievements was to show that Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, which requires that the speed of light be the same for all observers, thus requires that space and time be mixed together, which is to say, combined together to make space-time.

When this fact is incorporated into Newton’s equations in Cartan’s curvature language, it can be shown mathematically that not only is the spatial curvature now restricted, but the restriction necessarily turns Newton’s equations into Einstein’s equations! That is, Einstein gravity is restricted Newton gravity! I have shown in a paper published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that quantum mechanics is also restricted Newtonian mechanics.

The Newtonian Empire never fell! Newtonian physics, the center of modernity, holds!

The Australian philosopher David Stove, in his book Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult, showed that all post-modernism, in particular the entire work of the philosophers Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, is based on the belief that Newtonian physics was replaced in the twentieth century. If one reads carefully the founding texts of postmodernism in the humanities and the social sciences, one sees that these texts acknowledge that postmodernism is based on the perceived fall of Newton. Often they quote Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to this effect.

So all postmodernism is based on a mathematical error. There was no revolution in twentieth-century physics. As George Orwell pointed out in 1984, left-wing philosophy is ultimately based on a denial of mathematical truth, in particular denying that 2 + 2 = 4.

It is time universities, and intellectuals generally, accept that 2 + 2 = 4, reject multiculturalism, and return to modernity.

Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. He is the author of numerous technical papers, mainly in cosmology, quantum mechanics and general relativity. His non-technical books areThe Physics of Immortalityand The Physics of Christianity.